See Every Dispatch from the Libyan Revolution

A 15-year-old boy is standing in front of the burnt out High Court building shaking a can of spray paint. He sneaks an instinctual glance over his shoulder before pushing the valve. There are hordes of people on the sidewalk, but no one cares. The first strokes outline a face, the next a crazy mane of hair, and then the signature turban hat and sunglasses. There's no expression on cartoon Muammar el-Qaddafi's face, just the exaggerated features. If he'd tried that a few weeks ago, he would have been imprisoned and tortured, probably killed.

But after a four-day all-out street war, Libya's second largest city has been under rebel control for the last week. The battles obliterated every trace of the Colonel and torched his centers of power—people's committees, police stations, a despised army barrack, and the reading room dedicated to Qaddafi's political manifesto—the Green Book. An estimated 300 people died fighting the security forces in Benghazi, thousands more were injured.

Yet the same uprising that wants to depose Qaddafi can't seem to help re-plastering his likeness. Beneath the images are slogans: "Gadafi, ugly face and heart" and "Gadafi GO 2 HELL" and "Game Over." You could never have written anything like this before, but now, in eastern "liberated" Libya, insolence against the Brother Leader is ubiquitous.

Graffiti has been an essential feature of the Arab revolts of the last two months. There's a sweet sense of headiness when people claim a public space so long controlled by the state propaganda machine. If it's possible there might be more slandering of Qaddafi on Benghazi's streets now than there were the fawning posters of him that blanketed the city just two weeks ago.

On the second floor of the High Court, now called the Media Center of Rebels, is a room dedicated to producing anti-regime propaganda. The long tables here are littered with poster paper, magic markers and paint. The building was torched in fighting on Feb. 18; today it still smells like smoke.

Sitting at one of the tables where young men hunch over tracing slogans and outlines of Qaddafi, Maher Othman isn't sure how to answer my questions. It doesn't make sense to the painter that I would ask how it feels to draw anti-Qaddafi pictures. "For 42 years, we couldn't even talk. When I was a child, my family told me don't say anything about Qaddafi, even on the street because the electric wires are listening," the soft-spoken, balding 37-year-old tells me. "We couldn't even talk, how could we write?"

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Crossing into eastern Libya from Egypt, graffiti is the first sign of revolt (aside from the fact that you're allowed through that border at all). Neatly printed in English there's a simple message to the international press who've been arriving in droves to a country that for so long made entry near impossible. "We want freedom," it says.

The journey to cover the possible downfall of one of the longest serving leaders in recent history begins in Cairo, where teams of journalists pack into taxis to drive the eight hours to Egypt's western border. My group started out at seven in the evening in an attempt to push all the way through to Benghazi overnight. It's three a.m. when our three-car convoy arrives at the Egypt-Libya border crossing. Dozens of empty vans are parked waiting to ferry out evacuees. We're told that cars cannot ply the Libyan highway in the dark, so we're stuck waiting at the Egyptian gate for first light.

At sunrise we enter the Egyptian departure terminal where people are crammed into every corner. Migrant workers, Bangladeshis mostly, wrapped in green blankets waiting for their Embassy to collect them. It smells heavily of sweat and looks like a refugee camp.

We're processed quickly and jump into a van arranged by Libyans eager to help the press cover their liberation. There is no waiting or passport stamping on the Libyan side, just graffiti and a small group of men huddled around a fire. "Welcome! Welcome to free Libya!" the men call out sleepily.